Pitfalls of Participatory Programs : Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes community members, specifical...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/03/9379723/pitfalls-participatory-programs-evidence-randomized-evaluation-education-india http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6706 |
| Summary: | Participation of beneficiaries in the
monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as key to
improving their efficiency. In India, the current
government flagship program on universal primary education
organizes community members, specifically locally elected
leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools,
into committees and gives these powers over resource
allocation, monitoring and management of school performance.
However, in a baseline survey this paper finds that people
were not aware of the existence of these committees and
their potential for improving education. The paper evaluates
three different interventions to encourage
beneficiaries' participation: providing information,
training community members in a new testing tool, and
training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading
camps for illiterate children. The authors find that these
interventions had no impact on community involvement in
public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning
outcomes in those schools. However, the intervention that
trained volunteers to teach children to read had large
impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths
volunteered to be trained, and children who attended these
camps substantially improved their reading skills. These
results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints
in participating to improve the public education system,
even when they care about education and are willing to do
something to improve it. |
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